Why not give to even more pressing problems, such as poverty or AIDS, which is killing millions of people each year?

The most pressing issues are the most pressing because they have not been solvable. Hundreds of billions in foreign aid has been put into Africa without making much of a difference. I would rather put my money where it can have some meaningful impact. I don’t like to throw money at programs that really haven’t worked. The great George Soros is said to have spent $5 billion to $6 billion in charity. The work he did before the Iron Curtain fell is famous and was extraordinarily productive, but I don’t know what he’s done with much of that money since then.

Well, then, what about poverty in your own backyard, such as the work the Robin Hood Foundation is doing to fight poverty in New York City?

It’s easy for rich white people to throw money at disadvantaged black people—whether it’s here or in Africa—and feel good about it. I call that solving the white man’s burden. Let me be straight: I do not disapprove, in any way, of aiding black people in need. What I am critical of is unfocused and lavish spending on blacks as blacks. Robin Hood is a private welfare program, and I have no interest in that. More to the point, there isn’t nearly as much poverty in New York as a lot of the figures indicate. So that sort of unfocused spending does not interest me.

But Robin Hood is raising so much money—$71 million at its last gala—that you can’t possibly criticize its fundraising acumen.

Not at all. Although I hate those kinds of dinners and don’t go to them, if other people like to go to them, God bless them. If people can have a little fun in this mundane world of charity, God bless them.

Is Wall Street giving back enough?

I find the term giving back an offensive one. In the process of making their money, Wall Street professionals have been profoundly productive. You surely have read about collateralized debt obligations and structured investment vehicles and other forms of securitized debt, and how people don’t know what they’re worth, and how Wall Street has done something terribly wrong in packaging and selling them this way. But these guys have diffused the risk in the entire economy. Instead of banks closing down, as they would have 50 years ago, you now have risks spread all around the world. People who make money in this country are being more productive in making it than in giving it away. I find it inconceivable that Bill Gates can create the benefits in giving away his fortune that he has created with Windows and the PC-based information economy.

Can we take it that you’re a Republican, then?

I am a Republican, although I am ashamed to admit it at this point.

Okay, let’s rephrase that other question: Should Wall Streeters be giving more than they do?

It depends how old they are. Until their middle fifties, they should spend their time making money. Once they reach their mid-fifties, however, many highly productive entrepreneurs have really shot their wad. It was true in the Gilded Age. I think Carnegie and Mellon both sort of retired at 40. People who are bright enough to make bright fortunes usually have bright ideas when they’re young. Up until they’re about 50, then, they should be making money.

There is all this talk about philanthropy that ignores the effort needed to make the money in order to give it away. That said, I don’t think most people in their fifties, sixties, and seventies are giving away nearly as much as they should. I have confronted some of my rich friends with this, and they admit it but don’t do anything about it. There is a paralysis. They want to do something as creative in giving it away as they did in making it. But that’s highly unlikely, and deep down they resent that. So what happens is that they die, there’s a foundation, their heirs take a generous cut for themselves, and then they give the rest of it away to organizations that the person who made the money wouldn’t have dreamed of giving it to while they were alive.